Cut to the quick

Published: Friday, March 15, 2013 at 03:59 PM.

If the powers that be will allow pocketknives to be carried aboard airplanes again, what are the chances responsible students can resume carrying them to school?

Was that a great choking and wailing and gnashing of teeth I just heard?

If I were a 12-year-old student today, I’d be pretty discouraged, and insulted, that no one trusted me to carry a pocketknife in a crowd. But in an era where even the city council makes Boy Scouts go through metal detectors, it just solidifies my belief that the terrorists have won.

I carry a knife. I avoid metal detectors when I can. The four or five metal stents in my arteries also set off alarms, which just begs guards to get more up-close and personal with my groin area, a situation I’d just as soon avoid.

I’ve always owned and carried knives. If I go into the wilderness, I carry my big machete. For normal meanderings around civilization, a small Old Timer serves me well.

I carry a knife for a variety of reasons. Mainly to clean under my fingernails. But, should the terrorists get me cornered, I could defend against their assaults. The knife isn’t all that sharp and the blade isn’t so long to cause damage, but I could give them a pretty severe infection.

When I was a boy, my grandfather gave me a pocket knife. I’d rather have that knife than a $50 gold piece. Men carried pocketknives, which meant I was a man by this solemn familial bequeathment.

If the powers that be will allow pocketknives to be carried aboard airplanes again, what are the chances responsible students can resume carrying them to school?

Was that a great choking and wailing and gnashing of teeth I just heard?

If I were a 12-year-old student today, I’d be pretty discouraged, and insulted, that no one trusted me to carry a pocketknife in a crowd. But in an era where even the city council makes Boy Scouts go through metal detectors, it just solidifies my belief that the terrorists have won.

I carry a knife. I avoid metal detectors when I can. The four or five metal stents in my arteries also set off alarms, which just begs guards to get more up-close and personal with my groin area, a situation I’d just as soon avoid.

I’ve always owned and carried knives. If I go into the wilderness, I carry my big machete. For normal meanderings around civilization, a small Old Timer serves me well.

I carry a knife for a variety of reasons. Mainly to clean under my fingernails. But, should the terrorists get me cornered, I could defend against their assaults. The knife isn’t all that sharp and the blade isn’t so long to cause damage, but I could give them a pretty severe infection.

When I was a boy, my grandfather gave me a pocket knife. I’d rather have that knife than a $50 gold piece. Men carried pocketknives, which meant I was a man by this solemn familial bequeathment.

I was warned it was not a toy, not something to be used against another person. It could be used for fetching black gum toothbrushes for Granny’s snuff-dipping or cutting watermelons rather than busting them on a rock. I could jab ‘tater bugs or ‘mater bugs or cut flowers. I could cut out the worm holes in apples or extract the worm and do an autopsy on the spot. I could make pipes out of acorns and corncobs. When I got older, I could slice off a chew of Black Maria plug tobacco.

When my elder grandson got old enough, I was going to give him a pocketknife for Christmas. I was advised this was inadvisable. Knives are strictly taboo everywhere except your own backyard. If he forgeot and took it to school, he could be suspended, banned, put on the no-fly list and his rank and honors stripped from his uniform like Chuck Connors in “Branded.” Thanks for the Christmas gift of infinite ignominy, Gramps.

Some of my knives are among the most treasured gifts I have ever received. It’s not so much the knife itself, but what it represents to me. Lillie Crews of the VFW Auxiliary once presented me with a small, engraved knife in recognition for helping get some news out about their organization. She could have very easily picked up a phone and said thanks, or even sent a 3-cent postcard and penned a personal note. Instead, she gave me that little flat penknife I still have among my souvenirs. I have a small, pearl-handled knife from the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. My mother got it personalized for me when she went to the fair. Both of these knives are less than 2 inches long and, like the half dozen or so Swiss Army knives I have, would be of little practical use against enemies foreign or domestic, unless the attackers are jonesing for joints and need the tweezers for roach clips.

Another knife with lots of memories is the yellow-handled knife that belonged to my Uncle Joe Andrews, who worked many years for Jack Pritchett’s Gulf Oil distribution. Then there’s the Buck knife I got when I went to New York City in the early 1980s. A friend of a friend handed it to me one night when he sent me down the street to a little market to pick up some supplies.

“You might need this,” he said conspiratorially as he pressed it into my hands. “Never know who you’ll run up against on the streets of New York.”

I wasn’t a Jet or a Shark and when I returned from the uneventful errand, I handed it back to him, but he waved me off as if the dangers might never end. And, prophetically, they haven’t.

I wish I could boast I still have my old Boy Scout knife but, alas, I can’t. But, to remain prepared for the apocalypse, I have the fancy deer-antler-handled knife with keen edge that I can carry in my boot, and the pair of “Rambo” survival knives that would be useful in skinning game, defending against the zombie hoard, helping me find my way (thanks to the compass on top of the handle), and felling small trees or stitching up wounds (thanks to the steel sawing-wire and needle and thread secreted in the handle).

And if those fail, I have the commemorative Jim Bowie knife Cary Allred gave me. Lord knows Cary and I irritated one another to no small degree, but he knew that giving a knife as a gift was a sign of trust. To give a man a tool that he could use against you is the ultimate expression of faith.

If we’ve lost that much faith in one another, where’s the end?

And to whom who do I bequeath all these knives?

Jay Ashley is managing editor of the Times-News. He remains prepared at jashley@thetimesnews.com